


With Teeth

by Nighthaunting



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen, M/M, Prompt Fic, but doesn't have enough of the puzzle pieces to not end up, he's always sort of suspicious, i want to make a 'carnal knowledge' pun really bad, in the woods at the full moon, lion's going to get et, maybe in a sexy way, or maybe not, the lion makes a pretty great horror heroine, this turned surprisingly dark?, with the hungry werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lion knows beasts.</p>
<p>for the prompt: Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Teeth

There’s an itch that runs up the Lion’s spine whenever he and Russ are in the same room together. It is a shiver, an urge to roll his shoulders and straighten the collar of his shirt, to tug his sleeves until they’re no longer bunched around his elbows, to check his weapons and make sure he can reach them quickly.

He hasn’t asked Luther about it, because he knows what Luther would say already. If the Lion described the feeling to him fully—and he would, he knows, because how would Luther tell him what it was if he didn’t?—then it would be dismissed. He knows the words Luther would use. The Lion knows enough to know that whatever it is he feels, it’s not anything as small as some inner sense of decorum, or even a sense of pride that others look to him that drives a man to take care with himself.

That it only seems to happen when Russ is around would make such a conclusion foregone in Luther’s mind—Luther does not _like_ Russ, Luther thinks Russ drinks too much and thinks too little—it is only right that the Lion should also be discomfited by such a man as well, Luther would tell him.

The Lion is not discomfited. He is not particularly sure what it is to be embarrassed. He thinks of it sometimes, in an abstract way, remembering the times he’d seen a young aspirant be brought up short by the masters. They would mumble and try to keep their eyes on the floor, a flush would crawl up their necks and across their faces.

To keep his eyes on the floor would be dangerous, the Lion thinks. He isn’t sure what the itch he gets between his shoulder blades is, but it isn’t discomfiture. Russ does not mumble, his eyes stay on the Lion himself, his skin is pale enough that sometimes the Lion thinks that all the blood was frozen out of him by his homeworld. Russ smiles a great deal, at things the Lion does not understand, and sometimes at nothing at all.

He is not in the forest anymore, and the Great Forests no longer have any Beasts in them, but if the Lion were pressed—and he does not like to be pressed at all—he would say the feeling he gets around Russ is the same feeling as being stalked by some great predator. Knowing it is there, and knowing that as it watches you it decides how it will attack and where its claws and teeth will best rend, but being unable to see exactly what manner of creature it is or where it is hiding.

It speaks poorly of his relationships with his brothers, the Lion thinks, that he feels such a thing around one of them.

Sometimes, though, as he watches Russ from the corner of his eye, the Lion thinks he can follow Russ’ gaze not to the viewscreens or tactical displays, but to the lines of his own throat and the places where his sleeves ride up away from his wrists.

An itch runs up the Lion’s spine: he rolls his shoulders back and squares them; he straightens his collar minutely; he tugs his sleeves down over his wrists; he checks his weapons discreetly and makes sure he can reach them.

Across the room Russ catches the Lion’s eye. He grins.


End file.
